Did you know that the good monks of Lindisfarne, famous site of the Viking raid in Britain in 793 C.E. (the raid that began the Viking Age) were not victims but participants in the infamous Viking attack? Yes, that’s right. That’s now how reality works according to Catholic League president Bill Donohue, though I’m certain he hasn’t thought out the consequences of his reasoning; conservatives seldom do.

Bill is positively incensed about perceived persecution of the world’s longest-lived persecutor, the Catholic Church: “Proud Persecutors for More Than a Millennia-and-a-Half!”™ He is upset about attacks against “those who are distorting the truth about priestly sexual abuse.” He’s not upset about the abuse itself. Like the Inquisition (we’ll get to that below) it didn’t really happen.

In fact, he is so upset people talking about the truth that his group paid for a full-page ad in the New York Times last Monday that blames the church’s sex abuse problems on homosexuality. That’s right; it’s not pedophilia that is to blame. Nossir. How does that work? We’ll get to that as well.

What is truly monstrous is that he says that some of the children abused were not victims, but active participants in their abuse. Nothing like the rape victim being the guilty party these days; remember, Georgia State Rep. Bobby Franklin (R-Marietta) has already told us that rape victims aren’t victims at all, but accusers.

In this unconscionable and immoral re-framing of our reality matrix, Donohue surpasses the sins of other Republican revisionists like Franklin, David Barton and Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin, as well as of Mitt Romney:

“The refrain that child rape is a reality in the Church is twice wrong: let’s get it straight – they weren’t children and they weren’t raped.”

Donohue goes on to claim: “We know from the John Jay study that most of the victims have been adolescents, and that the most common abuse has been inappropriate touching (inexcusable though this is, it is not rape).”

Because if they’re adolescents it’s alright to abuse them, right Bill?

So it must be okay then that just one priest, Father Lawrence C. Murphy, all by himself, molested over 200 deaf boys over a 25 year period?

IMPORTANT: It should be observed that the aforementioned 2004 study by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice was funded by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Yeah…no problems with objectivity or anything like facts there. But it’s the smoking gun Donohue needs:

“The Boston Globe correctly said of the John Jay report that ‘more than three-quarters of the victims were post pubescent, meaning the abuse did not meet the clinical definition of pedophilia.’ In other words, the issue is homosexuality, not pedophilia.”

Not so much. A primary sexual interest in 11-14 year old pubescents is another psychiatric disorder called Hebephilia. An interest in mid-to-late adolescents (15-19) is called Ephebophilia. Neither of them are called “homosexuality” but Donohue isn’t interested in facts here; he zealously presses on:

“What accounts for the relentless attacks on the Church?” he asked in conclusion. “Let’s face it: if its teachings were pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage and pro-women clergy, the dogs would have been called off years ago.”

IMPORTANT: It should be noted with regards to Donohue’s claims about homosexuality being to blame that, as the Huffington Post writes, “Our prisons are filled with lots of “normal” married folk who just also happen to sexually abuse children.”

No, Bill, to get the dogs “called off” your priests will have to stop abusing children and adolescents. The Catholic Church will have to stop pretending it’s doing nothing wrong and that it’s priests are the real victims. According to Bill’s logic, if you’re not a child you’re a willing participant, making all rape victims…not victims. They’re not even accusers. You might even be an active participant in your own non-rape.

It almost sounds like consensual sex between adults. Let’s tell that to those 200 deaf children Father Murphy molested. I’m sure they’ll feel all better.

As I said, the monks on Lindisfarne and other Christian sites plundered by my Heathen ancestors must have been active participants as well. They weren’t children, after all. Bill Donohue has shattered earth’s reality matrix; we live in a world where facts mean nothing, where anything you say can be true, where innocent children are active participants in their own molestation and be to blame for it as well, instead of the molesting priests, who can retire with priestly dignity intact.

Of course there are other problems with Donohue’s alleged “facts” – according to SNAP (Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests) half of those abused are female.

And we all know that the stodgy and prejudiced Catholic Church does not allow women to be priests.
How to explain this, Bill? Maybe the Vikings did it?

Allegations of sexual abuse involving the Roman Catholic clergy in the United States rose sharply last year to nearly 700 from around 400 in 2009, according to a church report Monday.

The vast majority of the allegations, 653, involved alleged abuse that occurred decades ago but whose “victims/survivors are just now finding the courage to report” them, the study said.

Unfortunately, neither the Catholic Church nor its staunch defender Bill Donohue take these allegations seriously – or the victims themselves.

To be fair, the Pope himself has been more of a hindrance than a help in this whole sordid affair, more of an enabler than a stern parent. Still, the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights will…well, let’s just say a tinfoil hat won’t save you from its warped messages. After all, Bill Donohue is the guy who gets upset at Lady Gaga’s lyrics, not by what happens to the seven-year-old girl who is cornered at the stove by a priest and raped. It’s okay to rape little boys and girls and especially adolescents who can actively participate in their own degradation, but just don’t write provocative lyrics.

And I won’t even mention the “participants” in the Inquisition. We already know from people like Bill that the much-feared Inquisition was really a love-fest; the real culprits were those damned witch-burning Protestants! Bill has even said he’d like to bring it back. Who doesn’t want to be tortured to death, after all?

And he’s trying to convince us the victims of the church, not the church, and not himself, are to blame for how the public sees the organization he claims he is trying to protect.

Until the Catholic Church acknowledges there is a problem there will be no solution. It is time to stop scapegoating and making excuses and making up facts and admit there is a problem that needs to be fixed before hundreds more people, male and female alike, are abused by Catholic clergy.

It is the only way the dogs will be called back. Until then, they will continue baying at the proper place – the Catholic Church.